Islam and Terrorism in Australia

Islamic "terrorism" gets far too much publicity and concern in Australia. While it is terrible to the people who have been killed and wounded and their families, the effect on 99% of the "Western" population in the USA, Europe or Australia is miniscule - occasional irritation at airports. Islamists are helpless to terrorise society or overthrow governments in any non-Muslim country. This is not to minimise the disastrous consequences for those involved in terror attacks most of which are never widely publicised. There are numerous lists of these international attacks on the internet.

In 2014 a criminal and deranged Iranian refugee, Man Haron Monis, killed 2 people in a self-proclaimed Islamic terrorist act. In 2014 a 15-year-old Iranian-born Iraqi-Kurdish boy shot dead a 58-year-old accountant, who worked for the New South Wales Police Force, outside the Parramatta Police headquarters. As we've all seen video of him running around shouting "Allahu Akbar" and shooting in the air we can assume he was attempting to become an Islamic terrorist though one to be pitied rather than feared.

On 24th August 2016, a young backpacker doing rural work in Home Hill, North Queensland, was stabbed to death by a Frenchman shouted “Allahu Akbar.” Two other people and a dog were also stabbed. On the 11th September 2016, Ihsas Khan, 22 of Bangladeshi heritage, stabbed a stranger in an Islamic State-inspired attack on Saturday afternoon. He chased the 60 year old shouting "Allah Akbar" while trying to break into a house in which the victim was sheltering. Khan, who has psychiatric problems, has stated "he hated Australia because of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars."

In Australia at least, lightning, chicken pox and shark attacks are more likely to kill us than Islamic terrorism. Car accidents, our husbands, eating spoiled food and falling out of bed are definitely far more likely to kill us than Islamic terrorism.

It's quite certain that the people who should really be afraid of Islamic terrorists are Muslims, especially those living in countries like Syria, Algeria, Libya, Iraq or citizens of Israel.

The growth of Muslim minorities in Western countries has caused social problems and will cause further social problems. The elites within some of those countries (France, Germany and Sweden especially spring to mind) have promoted immigration from Muslim countries and their populations have to bear the expense and pain that this has produced. After the terrorist attacks of 2015 elites and the media have stopped pretending that there is no problem and the 2015 Syrian and African influx of immigrants have exacerbated tensions. There is one constant that determines how likely Islamic terrorism is likely to occur and how much a society can be damaged by a Muslim minority - the size of the minority. Australia is relatively fortunate in having a small Muslim population and this can be kept that way despite the Muslim greater birth-rate by ending Muslim immigration into Australia.

Since 1970 the Muslim population has grown 20 times and during that time has altered dramatically. This change has not been one that is often publicised and is definitely not one that will benefit Australia. While Australians expected that immigrants should integrate into the wider society as had the Jews, Greeks, Italians, Spaniards and Yugoslavs before them many Muslims, according to Muslim academic Halim Rane, "thought they could live in complete disregard for - and, in some cases, condescension towards - Australian culture." Well it's a free country but there's no reason we should respect them for it.

Muslim Radicalisation: Where Does the Responsibility Rest?
Halim Rane: ABC Religion and Ethics 13 Oct 2015

Islamism's main goal is the establishment of a so-called Islamic state or caliphate based on the implementation of a shariah law code that prioritises the role of the state in the enforcement of sexual morality, physical punishments for violators, curtailment of human rights and civil liberties, subjugation of religious minorities and persecution of both political and religious dissidents.

Since the end of the White Australia Policy and its replacement with multiculturalism in the late-1960s, Australia's Muslim population experienced an almost ten-fold increase between the early 1970s and mid-1990s when it first exceeded 200,000. This was followed by a further doubling of the Muslim population in Australia by 2011. Many of the Muslims who migrated to Australia since the 1990s were raised in the climate of Islamism that spread across the Muslim world with the aid of Saudi Arabian petro-dollars. These Muslim migrants brought with them ideas and attitudes that were not conducive to Islam in Australia and at odds with the Islam already being practiced by Australia's early Muslim communities for over a century.

The large numbers of new Muslim migrants quickly overwhelmed the relatively well-integrated early Muslim Australians. Imams educated in mostly Middle Eastern and South Asian madrassas (religious schools), or often completely unqualified, were able to convert second and even third-generation Australian-born Muslims to Islamism.

Herein lays the origins of one part of the Muslim radicalisation problem we face today. By not giving due recognition to the early Muslim Australians and the way they practiced Islam, the Muslim migrants of the 1990s onwards not only almost eradicated Australian Islam, but in turn caused potentially irreparable damage to the Muslim communities' relationship with wider society, which contributes to the alienation of Muslim youth and makes some vulnerable to recruitment by extremists.

Waleed Aly reinforces this depiction of an Islamist orientation in Islam in Australia. In 1998 in Egypt he became a "born again" Muslim and on his return to Melbourne got involved with what he described as a fundamentalist way of thinking.

'… all that was really being offered was a brand of Islam that I think really did inculcate a kind of fundamentalist outlook - a kind of thing that was about purity to the exclusion of everyone else who is by definition then impure,' he said.

'When I think about fundamentalism, it's a term I hate because it's so misused, so when I use it I try to define it and what I mean by that is a belief in the inherency (inerrancy?) of your own self.'

Aly said he started preaching in Melbourne like many others who followed a similar fundamentalist kind of path and admitted that in a lot of cases it was a form of youth rebellion against parents.

'I was never in anything that was remotely violent, for us it was all about preaching,' he said.

'It's funny, we didn't seem to think that people would need to like us. We just kind of figured that we could go out there and yell at people and then they'd suddenly see the light and think wow, you guys are great.'

He grew out of the phase and said most often people do when they realise it doesn't fit with going to university, getting a job or starting a family.

A less intelligent and more devout Muslim than Waleed might - and many do - decide to forego the family and university - especially if those options aren't even open to them - and follow fundamentalist Islam. 150 to 300 Australians have gone to join ISIS and fight in the cause of Allah and only one has joined Channel 10.

Since 1970 the powers that be encouraged Muslim immigration that increased the Muslim populations by 20 times to 400,000 and these new immigrants and the Islam preached in mosques were Islamist and our politicians had either no idea or didn't care. 2015 plans were to import 12,000 Syrians but only a handful have arrived as the Liberal government is focussing on persecuted minorities, ie Christians.